One of the hardest an most atmospheric RPGs ever made, Gothic is all about trial and error!
When i finally reached home, i went to my pc and much to my concern, i found out that the game wasn't very well received in America, but then i was a little happier to find out that the game was a tremendous success in Europe.
"Guess i just have to play it to find out!"
After 20 minutes on this game, i taught:
"How can Americans be so wrong?"
First, let's talk about the story, the kingdom is at war with the orcs, and the ore was slowly coming from the mine, but it was not enough to forge swords for the massive army, and the king had to do something, and much to everybody in the kingdom's concern, he declared that everybody who commited a crime, even a minor one, was going to work at the mine as a prisoner, supervised by the kingdom's best guards, and of course, you commited a crime, you know the rest... Eventually, the prisoners took control over the mine, and the king hired the realm's best mages to seal the colony with a magic barrier, the prisoner told the king that if he wanted the ore, he would have to give everything that could satisfy the prisoners. The king obviously didn't refuse...
The prisoners divided themselves in three camps, the new camp, the old camp and the sect or swamp camp.
Now it's up to you, who do you want to join? Do whatever you want!
The graphics in Gothic are great for their time, they are really detailed and the animations are numerous, they range from cooking to urinating.
The faces are nice and the clothes, swords and armors too.
I would even say that the environment is so great that it feels like you are really there!
The sound in gothic is great, the game features fully voice-acted dialogue and a fantastic composition, the battle sounds are not bad either.
One of the best things in Gothic is obviously, the gameplay. The developers wanted the player to feel a great interaction with the environment, for example, you can hunt an animal, take the raw meat and cook with a frying pan, you can smoke, sleep, etc...
Another thing great about the gameplay in gothic is the skills, with skills, you can improve your character's stats and he can learn other things like sneaking and pick locks, to improve the skills, you need learning points, to earn learning points, you need to level up, to level up, you need to earn experience, finally, to earn experience, you kill things and complete quests.
The combat in Gothic is rather simple, you can block and attack.
Not everything is perfect tough, the controls are rather complicated to get used to, you basically control everything with, uh, well, the control key.
Gothic is a hard game, especially at early levels, you take lots of damage and deal few, so you really got to get used to the combat system, so, my main advice is, save often!
In the end, you will want to replay Gothic, because it's has great replay value, and it is one of the best games ever made.